Lamb Virus is not a threat to humans, says FSA (heard it all before, remember BSE)

[Beaaware]

'A virus that has killed lamb and cattle does not pose a danger to humans' the Food Standards Agency has said.

This brings back haunting memories of the BSE disease that was suppose to be non-transmissable from animals to humans

I for one will not be eating lamb for the forseeable future, have already been potentially exposed to BSE due to eating what we were told by John Gummer 'beef was safe to eat', and yet today at least 200 people have died from human bse in the UK alone.

What the FSA fail to tell us is what have Germany & The Netherlands done to eradicate this harmful virus, all we are being told is that lamb is safe to eat, yeah right, lost my trust in the FSA's advice many years ago.

just to add to this story, 83 UK farms have so far been affected, the Schmallenberg virus causes birth defects and miscarriages, just awful.

I understand your scepticism, but the causative agents are quite different. BSE was caused by prions, which are mis-folded proteins; this is a virus.There are a lot of quite nasty diseases (bacterial/viral in origin) which primarily target animals and rarely cause disease in humans (Brucella abortus for one). I'm pregnant and have to say that I am not going to avoid lamb on this basis. I would avoid Scotland though, as the virus is transmitted by midges and other small biting nasties!

I would like to know how other countries affected with this virus are or have dealt with it and what advice they gave to their public. I read that pregnant women are advised to avoid lamb.

There are no known cases of Schmallenberg virus in Scotland.

link

I didn't mean to imply there was, gentleotter - just being wary as I know Scotland has a lot of midges in summer and the virus can be carried by them.

beaaware - I'm not surprised at the official advice, it costs them nothing to give it and then they're covered if anything does happen (though I think it's unlikely). Sorry I am quite cynical when it comes to these things... as you say, it would be interesting to see what other nations have been told.

Prions are not destroyed by cooking, and it wasn't really known how readily diseases caused by prions (like BSE on cattle ad scrapie in sheep) cross the species barrier.

Viruses are killed by cooking. They can sometimes cross between species; don't know if this one does. If they are saying no risk, that suggests there has never been a case in any creature than sheep.

Stop scaremongering and get factual.

Here is the official HPA advice - in short, pregnant women should avoid contact with sheep/goats/cattle which are giving birth. In animals, the illness itself is not serious in the animal, but it causes deformities and stillbirth if contracted during pregnancy.

"Dr Dilys Morgan, an expert in emerging infections at the Health Protection Agency (HPA), said: ?Currently, there is no evidence that Schmallenberg virus causes illness in humans and so far, no unusual illness has been reported in those who have been occupationally exposed. Although human infection cannot yet be excluded, recent risk assessments conducted by public health authorities in the Netherlands and by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) concluded that despite some current uncertainties, the risk to human health from SBV is likely to be very low.

?Nonetheless, any possibility of exposure is taken very seriously. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has advised farmers and veterinary surgeons to take sensible hygiene precautions when working with livestock and to report any suspicious cases to AHVLA for testing. It is also reinforcing its advice to pregnant women to avoid close contact with animals (including sheep, cows and goats) that are giving birth.

?The HPA will continue to work closely with veterinary and European public health agencies to better understand this new animal virus and any possible impact it may have on human health.?

The HPA has been working closely with colleagues at the AHVLA and has developed an information leaflet explaining what SBV is for those who may have been exposed to affected animals such as farm workers, farmers and vets. As a precautionary measure, the HPA is advising anyone who develops a fever within two weeks of contact with affected animals (such as farmers, farm workers and vets) to get in touch with their local Health Protection Unit for advice as part of the HPA?s enhanced surveillance"

Here is a useful link (with onwards links) for those who want to know more about this virus and its family.

thanks for that info edithweston, my view is that as this is a new disease we know little about, we should be cautious, they are warning people who come into contact with farm animals to be aware of feverish symptons, so this must indicate that it is transmissable to humans in one form or another, they obviously know that we can be infected otherwise why put out this warning?
I cannot help but think back to the blatant lies we were told between 1985 - 1996 that bse infected beef was safe to eat, our ministers went on TV to tell us that it was 'safe', is this new scare another repeat of what 'could' be yet another fatal disease for human beings? I hope not.

Just fuck off and have some fucking sympathy with those of us who are waiting to see what is going to happen in a couple of weeks.

charming

fivegomad is probably a farmer. Maybe that is why she is so aggressive.

Yes I gathered that, I hope he/she is not affected,this will be devastating for the sheep farmers just as it was for the bse cattle farmers, but at the end of the day public health is paramount.

There have been far larger outbreaks on mainland Europe, in countries with attentive disease surveillance regimes, and there is no reason to think this is jumping the species barrier to humans.

But all are being proactively alert, even though the risk to human health is thought to be slight (none of those which do infect humans from this family of viruses causes serious illnesses).

The risk that any virus might mutate into a form which damages health is, unfortunately, omnipresent. This virus might, and monitoring is in place. But so could any other, at any time.

If monitoring were not in place, I would share your concerns. But it is.

+1 to what EdithWeston and SneezeBlossom have said.

This is a new disease - it had never been encountered anywhere in the world before last year and yes, caution is advised - for anyone with direct contact to sheep. Last year there were no reported cases of transmission to humans on the continent.
Schmallenberg is a virus - it is susceptible to denaturing by cooking, unlike prions.
Additionally, this is not a subtle disease like BSE can be. We're talking obvious birth defects - those animals do not make it into the human food chain.

To be boycotting lamb or worse yet, comparing Schmallenberg to BSE is at best factually wrong (on every possible scientific level), and at worst constitutes grossly irresponsible and baseless fear-mongering.

Also, Beaware - BSE? Really? 200 people worldwide in 20 years? That's 10 people a year. Do you know how many people contract E-Coli every single day?
And that's something that lives in your gut and comes out of YOU every time you defecate! And your kids, and your friends and family, and everyone else!

Life is a risk. Far more than 10 people are killed on our roads every day, and there are more than 20,000 cases of E-Coli a year in the UK. And you're worried about the vague possibility of an ovine virus jumping species to humans through cooked meat? It's a wonder you venture out of bed in the morning...

plus i think you will find that most of the poor little lambs are born dead (and horribly deformed or die soon after anyway, so don't think they will be ending up on your dinner plate.

it could be devastating for the sheep farmers, and many will have large losses in an already tight industry.

We have cattle (in norfolk) and are worriedly waiting to see what happens in the next few weeks, but know someone who has had a cow abort, which seems to be the way it happens in cattle instead of them going to a full term pregnancy.

Very worrying time

Irresponsible scaremongering.

It's very scary for the farmers - much less so for the rest of us from what I've read and heard (and having sheep farmers in the family that's quite a lot).

The advice has always been for pregnant mothers to avoid sheep that are lambing or about to lamb see here I don't see that at the moment anything has changed for the general public.

I'm pregnant and living in the countryside and i can't say, other than worry for the farmers lively hoods, that this virus worries me to much.

But obviously it's early days and it may turn out at some point that humans can contract it, in that case OP i wouldn't deliver any lambs any time soon (which as far as i know pregnant woman weren't supposed to do anyway) but these lambs are not going to make it into the food chain.

Oh and if you really don't want to eat lamb just incase which is understandable i guess you may want to avoid beef as well, as the virus also affects cattle.

fivegomadindorset i really hope your sheep escape this.

hunton1, some victims of vcjd/nvcjd (which has no cure, no treatment, unlike other infections/diseases) are not even on the official statistics because of their gene type, did you know that farmers, farmers wives and people who have worked on farms have died from vcjd, in fact four farmers died of vcjd within a month or so of each other...........200 people may seem not many but with an estimated 1 in 4000 of us walking around not knowing that we are infected is rather a lot imo, did you know that if you have lived in the UK between 1980 - 1996 you cannot donate your blood or organs overseas because you have been deemed to have been exposed to BSE, did you know that they are considering filtering and testing your blood to remove infectious prions, so whatever your views on vCJD our department of health are taking precautions after all these years to protect you, all because we were told by Gummer & Co that ' beef was safe to eat'.
I sincerely hope that this latest virus is not as serious as the BSE crisis was and if lessons have been learnt from the past I am sure the public wil be informed accordingly by our politicians.

Beaaware - Britain has the most stringent rules on animal bio-hygiene in the world, from farm to table.

Farms all over Britain are being issued with clear instructions on what to look for, who to contact, common sense hygiene for animal handlers, etc.
A sick animal would not enter the human food chain.

Beef was safe - during the vcjd scare, unsold beef was fed to prisoners.I have no idea on the statistics on prisoner deaths due to vcjd but I'm sure the information is out there somewhere.

Sorry to be a cynic but there is always an animal scare at times when the government are at their most nefarious.

Farmers are on the alert for many diseases and it is down to good husbandry and vet intervention/ animal health teams to deal with these diseases from farmyard level.

Scotland has it's own midges thank you very much, we don't do furrin ones.

GentleOtter, sorry but I have to correct you here, beef was not safe to eat during the BSE scare, the list of UK victims has been well documented and these are ordinary people, the youngest being just 14 years old. Also may I correct you on another error, cows have entered the foodchain UNTESTED, here is the link from farming online, www.farming.co.uk/articles/view/5431
these cows may have been infected with BSE we wil never know, how could this have happened so recently if strict controls are meant to be in place.

The terrible thing is that nobody has ever been held accountable for the deaths of these human victims, imagine somebody asking you what caused your child to die of vCJD, answer: Beefburger most likely cause. Do you sue the butcher, the farmer, the vets, the animal feed companies, the DOH, the politicians, somewhere along the line someone is ultimately responsible for safety of our meat and if animals can enter the food chain untested lessons have not been learned imo.

what do you want though Beaware?

Nothing is 100% safe. But at least in Britain, standards are much stricter than elsewhere.